Want to boost your e-commerce revenues by 163%? Try a print catalog.
The formula is ridiculously simple. Send a catalog, get more sales. It worked for Penney’s last year, and it’s working for other companies too.
It’s not just for direct sales, either. A creatively executed catalog combined with a solid social marketing strategy can blow your audience wide open and strengthen your brand.
“[We] saw that customers were snapping Instagram photos of our premier catalog on their coffee tables and even going to lengths to style a photo with our catalog as the focal point,” said Loren Mattie of brand Z Gallerie. Their social media campaign, based around their new print catalog, hit the social big time last spring.
To be sure, today’s truly successful catalogs are markedly different from the giant product listing doorstop of yore. Today’s catalog publishers know that telling the brand’s story is the way to engage and drive interest, and catalogs reflect that in their editorial tone. The very act of distributing a catalog has an impact on how your brand is perceived, according to a study by Finnish research group VTT.
“A study by VTT found that consumers trust advertising in print media more than any other media,” according to this post in Heeter Blog.
The same article cited another study that showed websites “supported by catalogs yield 163% more revenue than those not supported by catalogs.”
And believe it or not, the average cost of securing a print lead is less expensive than a digital lead, notes this white paper on the resurgence of catalogs.
As the industry continues to deal with the fallout of the digital ad fraud scandal and the growing threat of ad blockers, catalogers can take comfort knowing that their strategy has a proven bedrock of success behind it.
January 5, 2017, 11:15 am